A Tour in New Zealand.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 971, 20 August 1881, Page 3

A Tour in New Zealand.

„ No. IV. — Christchurch and Port Lyttelton. From the Melbourne Leader]. The city of Christchurch is arrived at after travelling for nearly 100 miles over the level and treeless Canterbury Plains. Originally the plains were destitute of timber, but so much has been done in the way of making plantations of blue gums and pines around dwellings, as well as in belts and clumps upon the farms, that the appearance of the landscape has been greatly improved. Tree-planting has been more extensively carried out in the province of Canterbury than in any part of New Zealand or Australia that I am acquainted with, and the result is not only an immediate benefit to the land as affording shelter for stock, but the supply of timber which will soon be available will be of considerable value. As the city is approached the plantations become more numerous, the farming settlement more dense, and the proportion is greater of comfortable looking dwellings with gardens and well kept hedges. As the site upon which Christchurch is built is perfectly flat, no striking view of its buildings is obtained on approaching from any point, but the spires of the churches peering up through the trees of the artificial forest which closely surrounds the city, have a pleasing appearance, and one is cheered with the prospect of the bricks and mortar being relieved of their monotony by a wealth of green leaves.

A Gothic railway station of extensive dimensions, looking, if not like a church, very like a college, is the first object of interest, and the next is the long row of black, close, carriages, somewhat resembling mourning coaches, which turn out to be cabs. There are no waggonettes, and only a few hansoms are used in the city, so that nearly all the business left by the street tramways is done by these heavylooking two-horse broughams. In Hobart the same aristocratic style of conveyance is fashionable, but there are also numerous “ low-back-cars ” for the accommodation of the less pretentious class of travellers. In Christchurch, however, you must either walk, take the tramcars, or sport a carriage and pair. On the tramcars one can ride to his heart’s content for threepence, but the cabs in Christchurch and all the New Zealand towns are rather expensive. A shilling is the fare to any place within the town belt, a wide street running around the town proper, but the cabmen charge what they like if you go beyond this limit, and as every place seems to be outside of the belt the traveller gets decidedly the worst of it. To get your luggage from the steamer to an hotel in any of the towns is quite an important item of expenditure, for by the time the parcels are handed by the stewards to the wharf porters and from the porters to the men with the mourning coaches, you are inclined —especially if you are a Scotchman —to go into mourning about the number of “ saxpences ” that have disappeared. Although the New Zealand people travel a good deal and have adopted a good many . American ideas, they are a long way from understanding the American system of dealing with passengers’ luggage. The hotels are very reasonable in their charges, and most of the leading ones are well conducted, being much more American than the luggage system. At Coker’s Hotel, in Christchurch, I f met a number of American friends who had been shipmates with me from Melbourne, and they admitted that nothing was wanting but a supply of wooden toothpicks to bring the establishment up to the American standard. They also informed me that when an

American gets hard-up he dines at a sixpenny restaurant and goes up to the front of a leading hotel to pick his teeth.

“ Most of you,” said a Brooklyn preacher, “ live in New York, and only roost in Brooklyn.” I think the reverse of this state of things must exist in Christchurch. The business part of the city is so unattractive, and a large proportion of the premises are so mean, that I imagine the merchants and others stay as short a time as possible in town and hurry home to do the more earnest work of living in the beautiful suburbs. The streets are not wide, many of them running at oblique angles, and the pavements are not in the best state of repair, and while there is a large amount of business done, the manner of doing it is more leisurely than in Dunedin. In no part of the city does one seem to be far from the country, for the hedges and avenues of trees which adorn the streets are within view, the town hav-

ing the appearance ot being an unwelcome intruder into an immense garden. A few minutes’ walk along any of the streets from the centre of the town brings you between the hedgerows of hawthorn or furze and among the com-fortable-looking dwellings of the suburbs. These residences are embowered amid poplars, pines, firs, or blue gums, giving the houses a retired appearance and suggesting that the occupiers not only enjoy home life in them, but like to have their garden parties and other socialities well shut in from the vulgar gaze. Very snug little dinner parties, followed by lawn tennis, must take place in those ivyclad homes under the poplars, but rather stiff, I am afraid, for a free and easy Australian, for I should expect to meet the Bishop, the Dean, or at least the Incumbent, at every one of them, and there is no doubt De Quincey was right in his opinion regarding the frieiditv of episcopal manners.

Episcopal manners in all their characteristic stiffness are in force in Christchurch, and one finds that his Otago experiences are no guide to him in Canterbury. This province was founded in 1848 by an English Company, under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and derived its name from that church dignitary. The chief town is called by the English name of Christchurch, and each of the principal streets is named after an English bishopric. These facts, together with the Gothic railway station and other public buildings; as well as the poplar trees, holly bushes, and ivycovered walls show the essentially English character of this part of New Zealand. Just as the Presbyterian “ fast day ” is observed as a holiday by large numbers in Dunedin and Invercargill, Christmas is held as a religious festival in Christchurch. I was struck with the manner in which the people joined in the responses at church. The service was nearly all intoned by the choir, but the congregation joined in the responses so well that the music had none of the usual characteristics of a performance. A harvest thanksgiving was given in the churches during my visit, and as the churches were decorated with ears of grain and branches of fruit, there was something very admirable in the arrangement. The cathedral, which has been in course of erection for many years, and is now nearly completed, occupies a prominent position among the public edifices of the town. It has a tall spire which several members of a rich family of landowners have erected as a monument to their own memory. For a cathedral the architecture is rather peculiar. The style is intended, I suppose, to be the improved Gothic, but the building has such a Quaker-like trimness about it that many of the Gothic beauties seem to have been shorn off. In a city where the schools and other public buildings have nearly all pointed arches, where the private dwellings and even many of the shops present angular gables toward the streets, one would have expected to find in the cathedral a masterpiece of Gothic purity. Many of the shops and warehouses are built of wood, and while there are not wanting a number of substantial and imposing establishments, the proportion of low one-storey tenements is so large as to give the town a somewhat dingy appearance. A new-look-ing building, of a modern style of architecture, containing the post office and other public offices is a handsome edifice, and the Supreme Court, Normal School, Museum, Hospital and the University College are amongst the ornaments of the city.

(To be continued).